Kind of a weird semiotics misunderstanding. There was this trashy tabloid news program that did sensationalised nonsense most of the time, and they advertised the show with these teasers that were like, “tune in for the shocking conclusion OMG SO DRAMATIC”, it was ridiculous.

One time they were talking about a security guard who was killed, and the ad had some footage of the incident - or a reenactment -shown in slow motion with a red filter. The implication was you were seeing real footage of a lethal encounter, and OMG SO DRAMATIC.

Then later that week they were doing a piece on school bullying, and they had what was probably actors where two kids walk past each other in the halls and bump shoulders, you know, like you’d do in a TV show as shorthand for bullying. They put the same slo-mo red filter over it, and the same ominous DUN DUN soundtrack OMG SO DRAMATIC.

I thought that red slo-mo filter meant death, so I thought I was watching security camera footage of the lead up to an incident where one kid literally killed another kid. It was pretty traumatic.

I’m glad I didn’t grow up on a diet of that, I just saw the ads and didn’t like it. This is how people grow up to be afraid of everything they’re told to be afraid of.

I was like 6 years old when my dad randomly told me that if a player dies during a football game, the others players have to eat him before the game can continue.

I never watched sports so I didn’t even question it lol

Einstein said that if you move close to the speed of light, you’ll go forward in time. Therefore, I thought, if you go backwards at close to the speed of light, you’ll go backwards in time.

That if we didn’t have enough money we could just go to the ATM and get more.

Also, when I was very young, I apparently spent too long in the toilet once and one of my parents (don’t recall which) asked me if I’d fallen down the hole.
It took me shitting myself at school months later for them to find out that I’d been terrified of falling into the toilet (and avoiding using it as much and for as long as I could, or, in that particular occasion, longer) since that day.
(I was small but not that small, obviously, but kids can be surprisingly dumb for how surprisingly smart they are.)

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I do not know where I got this from, but I thought all dogs were male and all cats were female. I thought this while I had a dog named Betsy and a cat named Sebastian.

If that’s not bad enough on its own, I think I was in first or second grade when I learned the surprising truth. I wasn’t a dumb kid, either. I learned to read when I was about 3.5 yrs old and started 1st grade as a 5 yr old.

I’m now in my 70s and I still can’t figure out where I got that from!

You can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it and try hard enough.

I used to believe that if you just work hard you’ll get ahead in life

I always thought cigarettes contain tar, as in the substance asphalt on the road is made from. It always felt weird to me, why would they put it in the cigarettes but I figured maybe they need it so the tobacco doesn’t fall out or something.

That the Mormon god was totally real

Ass cheeks were shit tanks.

Trees make wind because whenever there was wind, they moved.

That god(s) exist(s).

Old people were always old

That my parents knew what they were doing, made good choices, and were reasonable people.

No, no, … and no.

That I’d grow up to eat candy, collect baseball cards, play video games, and read comic books.

No (type II diabetes runs in my family), no (wtf is a baseball card anyway), no (video games were replaced with homework permanently), and — well, actually — yes.

I love a good comic book, graphic novel, and/or animated series.